


Heroes Never Die (Except When They Do)

by Annie D (scaramouche)



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Crack, Domestic, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-17
Updated: 2009-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaramouche/pseuds/Annie%20D
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about aging and mortality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes Never Die (Except When They Do)

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Flippant mentions of mental illnesses.

John McClane dies on a Thursday afternoon, just a little after 2 p.m.

Other than the lack of holiday connotations, it happens pretty much as expected by everyone who’s known John since Nakatomi, i.e. there are bullets, explosions and the wanton destruction of public property, but as it so happens, near none of it is caused by John himself. There are new kids on the block now, all of whom are far better equipped to handle the shit that goes down than John McClane, harmless bystander. Then two of the bad guys make the mistake of mouthing off to his face, and John forces his bony fingers to work, shooting out their kneecaps and then rolling over them with his old man wheelchair.

(Technically, it’s only a wheelchair in the sense that it’s a chair that has wheels, though even then there are people who don’t count industrial-grade tracks as wheels.)

People are too busy screaming to notice when John chokes out one last _goddammit_ and then slumps in the chair, but the building doesn’t blow up, so there is a body to find when the dust settles.

Matt gets to ground zero at sunset, after doing his own bit to the save eastern seaboard. After shouting at various people in uniform, he’s finally brought to John, whose wheelchair’s right track is resting heavily on a bad guy’s torso. Matt starts giggling – starts, then it quickly turns into full-out laughing and gasping that he can’t stop until hands take him away and one of the medics gives him something to calm him down.

Whatever they give him, it seems to bleed over into all his brain processes, because Matt arranges the things that follow – autopsy, police report, notifying people whom should know – without his mind ever shifting back into first gear. Lucy, when she arrives, is a wreck, and the sight of her shaking when she bends over John’s body (_corpse_) makes Matt feel twisty awkward inside. He’s a pillar when Lucy clings to him, and Matt realizes with embarrassment that she’s misinterpreted his calm demeanor as some sort of macho stoicism borrowed from John, which, all things considered, would’ve been better than what’s actually going on in his head.

(In his head, he’s thinking about the upcoming funeral service, and how no one had better make him give a speech, because that would suck.)

The funeral takes place the following Sunday.

It’s tasteful but boring, and Matt’s only contribution is to stand around while people tut and cluck at him. Jack gives the eulogy, and there’s plenty of speeches that follow, but Matt doesn’t hear a word because he spends the entire ceremony staring at the blown-up photo of John (circa 90’s, hairline present but ready to make a break for it) above the casket. After that there’s drinking and plenty of _remember when_s offered all over the room, but Matt can only focus on how the blown-up photo is staring at him; how messed up is that.

Intellectually, in the part of Matt’s brain that isn’t preoccupied with zeroes and ones, he’s known that this has been coming for a while. It’s a miracle and a half that John got past hundred at all, like maybe John offended the Grim Reaper somehow, so life’s final _fuck you_ to John was to let his body get frail fogey while his mind – the one with Big Damn Asshole etched all over its neurons – remained as sharp as ever.

The first thing that went was John’s hearing, a scant few weeks after an otherwise innocuous beer run turned into a robbery break-up involving bullets getting up close and personal with his ears. John took the numbness of his cochlea as permission to shout at people a lot more, and Matt took that as permission to throw things at John to get his attention. In the first couple of months that followed, they played hide-n-seek with John’s hearing aid (John did the hiding), but that stopped when Matt busted his left cornea and he’d needed an immediate appointment with a couple of lasers. It was kinda cool to be a pirate for a while, but then his right cornea decided it was lonely and committed seppuku. It was a good thing that John’s hearings aid didn’t get misplaced anymore when they had to temporarily Marco Polo around the house.

John’s knees went next; first the right one, quickly followed by the left. Something about the ligaments drying up after decades of abuse, and after a third session of having big needles pressed into his kneecaps, John had said _to hell with that_ and got Matt to design the wheelchair. John had taken one look at the prototype and pointed out a dozen modifications that could come in handy, though none as handy as the GPS tracker that came to the rescue that one time when Matt was off consulting somewhere, and John drove (then rolled) to Philly when his grandkid Peter’s school was under siege by yet another group of bad guys.

Somewhere between the hearing aid and the wheelchair, Matt almost missed his own mid-life crisis for keeping up with John’s creative aging, but it did drop by, to wit: one fine day he went into a store and some young thing started talking to him slowly with small words about the wonders of micro-digi and swarm tech, and Matt had flipped out right there on the floor, yelling that he’d been a _GOD_ on the internet back in the day, and the young thing had said in awe, “Wow, you mean you lived before the internet?”

When Matt got home and relayed the story, John had laughed at him, and that wasn’t a surprise at all. What was a surprise was how much better John’s response made him feel. The here and there that had existed between them since the fire sale had shifted to a there and _there_, and Matt had squared it by hitting the age John had been when they first met. So they celebrated by having geriatric sex, all the while bitching about _kids these days_.

Still, things were okay for some time, until John slid closer to the 90 barrier and his upper body strength went bye-bye. That wasn’t cool at all, especially when some Hollywood hotshot arrived at their house unannounced one day to pitch a film based on John’s early exploits. It had gone like: “Pick one! Personally, I’m fond of the Nakatomi Plaza affair myself, it’s all heroism and claustrophobia, a modern day ninja in a labyrinth, but the fire sale affair does have such a powerful emotional resonance and _Jesus Christ that could’ve killed me what the hell are you doing?!_” Matt had seen the guy off, apologizing all the way, and when he got back into the house John was wheezing heavily between snickers.

Anyway, the point.

Right, the point is that Matt’s known for a quite while that this was coming. It’s expected, and he’s been bracing for it long before the fact. In a way, it’s almost anti-climatic, because he can’t even remember what their last words to each other were the morning before all hell broke loose (again).

What Matt doesn’t expect is John showing up the following Wednesday to start haunting him.

“What the hell?” are Matt’s first words to specter standing just beyond the dining table.

“Jeez, I hope not,” John says, and disappears.

Matt spends a few long seconds staring at the place where John had been standing. When he’s done staring, he dodders over there to wave his hands through the open space. His fingers touch only air, so he returns to the counter and starts another pot of coffee.

His hands are shaking while his brain works through the options: stress, emo, dementia. Maybe some of John’s insanity has rubbed off on him, like someone has to make up the crazy man quota in their single storey circus of funtime (as John used to call it), so by default Matt’s taken up the role of plunging headfirst into mental whoopee territory.

Matt puts in some music from the early Oughts, then paws through the memorabilia they’ve collated over the years. Back in the early days, John had been adamant in printing hard copies of their photos, and it had taken a couple of frustrating years for Matt to wean him off paper, though John had been smug as hell when a bare decade after that formats changed again and the digi transfer had kept Matt occupied for weeks. But the decision to make hard copies were, in retrospect, not a bad idea at all because it’s nice to be able to hold the images between his fingers like he’s able to absorb their mojo through his fingertips.

(Their early photos are still kinda embarrassing to look at; reminders of when Matt used to be a twig, and dude, look at what they used to wear.)

“Man, you were such a weed,” John says, voice close to Matt’s ear.

The photos land in a shower around Matt, who’s flat on the floor, eyes up to the ceiling. There is no John in the room, but his voice lingers in Matt’s ears for the rest of the day.

That night, Matt is twenty-something again and being dragged by an able-bodied John around DC while helicopters and cars do the tango around them. He hasn’t dreamt of those shattering 48 hours in years, so when he wakes up, there’s a moment of disorientation where a mind still reeling has to settle back into a body that’s three times over done with that shit.

The next morning, Matt finally starts to seriously consider that he’s going insane, and not in the exaggerated metaphorical sense.

He’s in the middle of shaving (his attempts at goatees left behind in the twenty-thirties when the grey took over) when the hair on his arms prickle and a heavy weight rests on the back on his neck. The touch is familiar, belonging to fingers that have touched pretty much every part of Matt’s body but – _but_ – his John’s hands haven’t been warm and heavy for, oh, at least half a decade.

Matt looks at the bathroom within the mirror, where John is smirking at him from behind his reflection’s shoulder.

His body screams _turn_ but Matt holds his ground. He wills himself not to blink, not before he can fully take in sight in the mirror, and it’s John, but not John as Matt has known him. This is a John he’s only ever seen in archive photos, a John with less lines and more smirk, but the eyes are windows to the soul and they are exactly those that Matt has spent some five plus decades losing himself in.

“I gotta know,” Matt says, his eyes are starting to water. “Hallucination? Med imbalance?”

John in the mirror shrugs. He’s wearing an off-white shirt, and the guns peeking out from the sleeves are tighter than the ones that yanked Matt around during their fire sale meet-cute. “You’re supposed to be smart one, remember?”

“You know what? I think this has finally hit the ceiling of my—” he blinks, and John’s gone, “—dammit.”

There are options and then there are _options_, so Matt falls back on ‘ol reliable by searching for answers on the internet. But that turns out to be a can of worms not worth opening because he’s quickly up to his eyeballs in more crap than he knows what to do with. He throws something at the screen and then hunts for Dr. Porter’s business card, propping it up on his keyboard as a reminder of another, if slightly iffy, option.

John doesn’t show up after that.

Matt’s pretty sure he isn’t disappointed, because as lovely as a personal poltergeist would be, the complications would outweigh any sort of advantage – not so much because of the _ghost_ thing, but more because it’s John running about unencumbered by stupid things like, oh, _reality_. That’s not even counting the possibility of Matt needing a padded room. (Matt hopes that’s not the case, because he likes very much the idea of John finally free of fucked up knees.)

For a while it seems that that’s that.

Matt settles into moving on with his life, because contrary to what Lucy believes (if her frequent calls are anything to go by), he’s a pretty sensible guy, decision to attach himself to the most irritating cop this side of New York notwithstanding. That’s the thing about being the S.O. of a guy with an anti-hero complex: face-off impossible odds often enough and the banal everyday conflicts become too petty to take seriously beyond excuses for make-up sex. That’s probably why Matt and John lasted as long as they did… It couldn’t have been only just the sex, for as great as it had been, there hadn’t been much of it near the end.

(Matt didn’t mind.)

(Okay, he did, but – you know – _priorities_.)

Funnily enough, death seems to come under ‘too petty’, and ain’t that a kick in the head.

It certainly explains why, when John finally does turn up again, Matt reacts a little differently.

It happens at night, while Matt’s sleeping. At least, he _was_ asleep, but then he’s awake. That’s not a strange thing in itself, because waking up in the middle of the night is one of the perks of getting fucking old, but after a few bleary blinks, mental transistors fire up and tell him that he's being red-diode-to-the-forehead watched.

He pulls himself upright, and – oh shit – he’s having a heart attack.

He knows it’s a heart attack because he’s had one before, but that was quite a few years ago and he’d quickly sorted out his diet and started taking brisk walks more often because if he went out of commission then there’d be no one to take care of John and _hell no_ that wasn’t going to happen on his watch, no sirree, and it’s weird what the brain decides to think about when there’s a vice is squeezing the bejeesus out of his chest and oh shit it hurts like the—

“Head’s up, motherfucker!”

Despite the rib-crushing pain, Matt recognizes John’s voice.

Suddenly the pain ceases, and Matt gasps in sweet air. He’s clutching his chest and his eyes are watering, but then his vision clears and he can see in the dim light John tussling with someone – or something – on the bedroom floor. John’s cursing and grunting, and in between there are squeaky little whimpers that Matt doesn’t want to think about.

Then John visibly gets the upper hand and starts pummeling the hell out of whatever he’s got crouched beneath him.

Matt waits for John to be done, quietly grateful for the opportunity to study him and commit what he can to memory. The trappings aren’t completely familiar (Matt’s curious about how that hair would feel between his fingers) but the smoothness of movement has its home among Matt’s years-worth of memories.

Eventually, John turns his head and looks at Matt. If Matt didn’t know any better, he’d think he could reach out and touch that face with its stubble and lines.

“Sorry,” John says. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“S’okay,” Matt asks, and how surreal it is to be saying that to a dead person. “What was that?”

“Uh…” John’s eyes dart to the side, which is a stupid thing to do because Matt fluency’s in C++ is only matched by his fluency in McClane’s body language. John says: “A dream. You’re having a dream, Matt. Go back to bed, toodle-loo yadda yadda.”

“Would it kill you to give a straight answer, John?” Matt says, and he winces at his own choice of words.

“Matt… I… You’re not going crazy,” John says, sounding sheepish and achingly young in the quiet echo of the room. “The first couple of times I dropped by, ‘kay, that was a mistake, I get that now. I just… I couldn’t help it, you know? I just needed to know that you were… Okay, just ignore everything I just said. Because this is a dream.”

“A dream,” Matt says.

“Yeah,” John says, nodding quickly.

“So, if this is a dream…” Matt leans forward, his nostrils taking in the scent of familiarity and home. “Is there anything you’d like to say? Since people talk in dreams all the time.”

John flinches, though Matt doesn’t know what he’s said to get that reaction. John’s mouth opens and shuts, offering no sound.

“Jeez, John, why you gotta run my ear off like that,” Matt huffs.

“What, you miss me yelling at you?” John says.

It’s Matt’s turn to stare, and that little bit inside that never quite woke up since the funeral starts to creak open. He says, so softly that he almost can’t hear the words with his own ears, “Actually, yeah. Nothing quite gets me going than someone screaming—” here he makes a pretty impressive John impression – “_Paging Matt Farrell, invalid dickwad in aisle three._ Better than a snooze button.”

When John flinches again, Matt reaches out for him – because that’s what he does – but then he thinks twice and pulls back in case contact is the bad idea that’ll break whatever spell that enabled this to happen. Matt’s the one who’s surprised when John completes the movement, a solid hand gripping Matt’s forearm and holding on. It feels – well, not exactly right, because goosebumps have blossomed all the way up his arms, but Matt pushes the unwelcome nausea away to focus on the sentiment.

“It’s okay, you know,” Matt says. “I didn’t mind any of it.”

“Sure,” John says.

Matt knows that John’s thinking about the long days (years) of him leaning on Matt; of John bitching when age caught up with him and Matt rolling his eyes as he lagged behind, but apparently John has conveniently forgotten that Matt always gave as good as he got. Matt would be lying if he said that John never got on his nerves – there was a year or so in there where the difficulty outweighed the awesome – but Matt’s one of those few lucky bastards of the universe who genuinely has no regrets.

“God, John, you asshole, really,” Matt says.

He smirks, at least. “Hey, don’t blame me for not believing the shit that comes out of your mouth.”

Over half a century of living in each other’s pockets and John’s still a fucking moron.

“Go, do whatever it is you have to do,” Matt says. “Wings, halo, whatever.”

“Wow, you’re the optimist,” John says. He squeezes Matt’s arm again. “Okay, now don’t forget your insulin shots, Nat’s birthday is coming up so I expect you to cheer her up since her gramps won’t be there to scare the other kids, and oh, and don’t waste your time putting stuff on my grave, I really don’t give a shit, okay? Waste that money somewhere else, like feeding the kids stuff that’ll spoil their teeth, that’d be good.”

“Shots, birthday, shit, gotcha,” Matt says.

“Good, good, I think that’s about it,” John says, and he’s grinning. “See you whenever. Love you, old man.”

Matt’s still sputtering after John’s long gone.

He knows this time that John won’t be back, but it’s okay.

_And then._

Matthew Farrell dies on a Tuesday evening of complications arising from Type 2 diabetes. It isn’t pretty, so when he wakes up, he finds himself gasping for breath with a throat that isn’t frozen over anymore.

He needs a moment to shake off the disorientation, what with his being newly dead and all. He stands up and is just starting to take in the – _whoa_ – startling view of a sky that is brighter than any photoshop job he’s ever seen when John McClane barrels into him and sends them both sprawling to the ground.

“Damn it, John, can’t a simple _hey, how are ya_ suffice?” Matt says, but it’s just a cover, because John’s body is over his, causing his nerve endings to sing a chorus of _warmth_ and _weight_ and _JohnJohnJohn_, and the sharpness of it is almost too much. The cotton in his head is gone, and all that’s left is an acute clearness; it’s like the past couple of decades never happened – or even if they did, they were a trial run.

This is what it’s like to be all the way awake.

“C’mon, Matt,” John says, and rolls over into a crouching position. His hand grabs Matt’s collar. “We gotta keep moving.”

“What’s the rush?” Matt says. He curiously twists his own hand into the collar of John’s jacket and tugs. The gesture throws John off-balance a little, and his expression of surprise is counterbalanced by the idiotic grin stretched across Matt’s face. “I just got here, man.”

“Demons,” John says, his voice low. “You won’t believe the strings I had to pull to get here in time.”

Matt doesn’t doubt it, but be damned if he’s not getting what he wants right now, so his arms are around John’s neck and he’s kissing him, and because John has missed him as well, he’s kissing right back. Matt hadn’t exactly forgotten this, but the memories had gotten a little blurry near the end there, so the shock of sensation is almost like their first time.

In the background, something explodes.

Matt pulls away to look, and boy, the colors really are much brighter here.

“Yeah, that’d be them,” John says, his breath somewhere near Matt’s cheek. “We gotta go.”

“Okay,” Matt says. They stand up just as something else explodes, and John takes Matt’s hand in his.

Someone somewhere once said something stupid about death being the next great adventure. It still sounds stupid even now that he’s actually here in this place with no immediate promise of harps nor brimstone, but John’s here and Matt’s with him, and that’s what matters.

If John’s grin is any indication, this place can’t be so bad, even if there _are_ demons.

They run.


End file.
